Personal Factors and Work-Life Conflict: A Study of a Malaysian Statutory Body

Abstract

Work-life conflict has been discussed prominently in the literature for the last two decades because the workforce is increasingly composed of individuals who struggle with multiple roles. A number of empirical investigations have been carried out to examine its nature, variance, and outcome. The purpose of this study is to determine the relationship between personal factors and work-life conflict among employees of a Malaysian statutory body using a sample of 120 personally-distributed questionnaires. The variables for personal factors consist of career commitment, household responsibilities, and financial needs. The findings indicated that two out of three variables of personal factors (i.e. household responsibilities and financial needs) are positively and significantly related to work-life conflict. The finding also reveals that career commitment is not significantly related to work-life conflict. Therefore, this study adds to the body of knowledge of work-life conflict that validated the positive relationship between employees’ personal factors of household responsibilities and financial needs with work-life conflict. On the other hand, this study also proved that an employee’s career commitment does not relate to work-life conflict, thus showing that a committed employee would not be feeling any conflict in fulfilling the demands of both of his or her work and non-work lives. Nevertheless, an employee who has higher household responsibilities and financial needs would face a higher conflict in fulfilling the demands of both of his or her work and non-work live. Hence, human resource practitioners could use this information as a reference in their managing their employees.